Category Archives: Book 4: Alien Machines & Evil Beatniks

When I said the League jet appeared, I meant it literally. In one moment I heard an engine’s roar coming closer. In the next, the jet hung above the roof, floating lower until the door opened, and Daniel walked down the ramp.

Then he stared for a second at the hundreds of dead frog-things on the roof.

For Rod, Sam, and the rest, it wasn’t Daniel walking down the ramp. They saw the Mystic, third generation telepath, and a member of one of the most famous telepathic families in the world.

Plus, Daniel was kind of hot even if that wasn’t obvious through the mask.

I muttered a few words that would have gotten a look from Mom if she’d been there, and leaned over the edge. The first wave of frog monsters hung halfway up the wall. They’d reeled in whatever line they’d used, and were hanging by their claws.

I hadn’t seen them holding a rope or anything. What were they using? A suspicion passed through my brain, and I watched as they opened their mouths. Their tongues shot out, sticking to the wall above them, and they yanked themselves upward, steadied by their hands and feet.

The gun fired a piercing, white beam. It had to be too bright to watch normally, but through the gun’s vision, I could see it burn the creatures. They changed from standing into whitish-black charcoal in bare instants.

Chunks of the patio beneath them cracked and shattered from the heat, flying everywhere, pelting the windows, breaking a couple.

I concentrated, trying to find out exactly how many frog monsters were around us. I stopped after scanning the immediate area. There were more than 500 gathering in the park next to the river. I didn’t even count the street. I knew what I needed to. There were too many of them for a straight ahead fight.

The gun was a hell of an equalizer, but I couldn’t point it everywhere at once.

As the butt of the rifle touched me, I saw everything differently—not in the good and evil sense, but as if I had another sense, one totally devoted to arms and tactics.

For each man with a gun standing in the doorway, I could tell where they were aiming. With a glance, I knew that the glowing man’s golden spider legs were a plasma-like substance contained within a casing he could generate or thin at will.

As it wrapped around my thigh, the limb felt warm and smooth, almost like plastic, but then it changed, becoming hot, painfully hot. It began to burn. I screamed, and blacked out.

And okay, that was the best thing that could have happened. “Hurt” doesn’t hold a candle to what I felt. I felt like I was nothing but pain. I felt like it was burning through the skin and into my leg.

Rod whirled around more quickly than I’d have expected. Not Jaclyn’s (“a blur knocked me out”) level of speed, but fast enough that if I ever got thrown into Faerie and had to fight trolls, I’d give them some respect.

Fast enough that his punches took out two of them at once, and their automatic rifles might as well have been shooting marshmallows. He didn’t seem to care.

They were pouring into the room. I didn’t know how many there were. More than twenty for sure. Probably more than forty.

Well, except that after Rod took out like, half of them, they were backing up and not firing a whole lot.

A few stayed in the doorway, but the rest retreated into the hall. Voices shouted words I couldn’t make out mingled with the beeps, clicks and flat tones of walkie-talkies.